Lock and Load: The Reassembled Machinist Guide

[Velhart]

The buffs they gave us are nice, but it still doesn't resolve the "sustained DPS" issue they said they were going to address. Despite higher DPS, our range is going to still depend a lot on RNG from Split > Slug > Clean.

[Sidra]

Hypercharge extended duration is more turret dps, and the Gauss Round adds 60 potency per minute, plus a small positive impact on Wildfire. The personal DPS difference between MCH and Bard wasn't that big to begin with, I'd imagine this closes it. And even if it doesn't Hypercharge is now much stronger than Foes'

[Cetonis]

The top of the lists consistently show BRDs being ahead of MCH.

... no they don't. Everything from the 99th percentile down to the 70th has MCH a bit ahead on A4S, a little more ahead on Thordan, and BRD a bit ahead on A3S. A1S and A2S are fight designs highly unlikely to be replicated, so it's more or less fair to ignore them. The 100th percentile most-gamed MCH-boosted Bard parses also don't really matter.

MCH needed for HC to catch up to Foe, for Rain to matter less (check, thanks to materia) and for their valley DPS to be a bit better without greatly adding to their overall DPS. Instead SE did nothing about the latter, and made HC blow Foe way out of the water - to the point that BRD is now further behind MCH than the vice versa ever was on any normal-style fight.

[Aiurily]

i mean sure, a lot of the #1 parses are pretty cheesy. but that goes both ways; the 100th percentile mchs can be just as cheesy as the 100th percentile bards (i'll be honest; i have never gotten single target balance/arrow, enhanced or not; or anything else for what i have up currently other than a2s, which is 100% cheese life. im sure other bards/cheeselords have, though.) but apparently even with that, they're losing. but even comparing stuff like a random bard parse to the current highest related machinist parse there's a fair difference. #1 mch on manipulator with no sac, nin/drg, no ast; 1249. 1 hypercharged MP, TP in last phase for people other than themself. #3 brd on manipulator, same comp basically; 1296.4 dps. that's with still playing paeon, ballad etc.

i don't like looking at 70th to 99th percentiles because in a way, i feel like that's not top level play. in a way those runs can be padded/cheesed too; not effectively enough to be 100th percentile and higher, but still padded. so i'd rather just view the bests of each encounter in the most "fair" environment and compare the current best results of each job against that. a1s/a2s as you said, unlikely to be repeated; but even a3s for example. the old highest mch parse was 1283 with nin/drg no ast; the current highest brd in that same condition (no mch also) is 1341. fair amount of difference there, for a3s, which has a fairly low amount of multi target uptime compared to the rest of the gordias fights (split hands/equal conc, add phase that's barely relevant because it dies fast, kidnap that dies pretty fast esp with caster lb3)

[Cetonis]

I don't think MCH has as much to gain with cheese as BRD though; attacking two legs on A4S, for instance, is a lot less valuable. The ceiling seems lower despite the same amount of effort. Also River of Blood / Straighter Shot is a higher-variance system than MCH's procs, so BRD can benefit more from outlier levels of luck. It's true that there's no ideal place to look for a representative sample of "honest" top play, but I'd think the 95th or 99th percentiles would be closer to it than the 100th would be.

A3S doesn't have the "you get to add damage that doesn't matter" element, but it is extremely Bard-friendly. It just doesn't feel as much so due to being juxtaposed to A1S and A2S. Phase 3 consists of waves of adds spawning on a circle with a 5-6 yalm radius, phase 2 has two targets and a DPS check where BRD can leverage Flaming Arrow and Rain of Death but MCH (I assume) doesn't want to go to Bishop... it's actually humorous how conveniently constructed it is. A difference as simple as the Lubricants starting on the outside and working their way in, and BRD vs. MCH on that fight would be a much different story. I'd be surprised if there's more than maybe one fight in Midas that is as skewed towards Bard as A3S is.

Really, the best measure of self-contained DPS is possibly going to end up being Stone-Sky-Sea, but it's hard to account for that variance. I wouldn't bet on the top times going to MCH for-sure, because godlike River runs certainly happen. But I would be surprised if the top BRDs' typical times (with more average numbers of BL procs, basically) are better than your times when you get a more average number of GCD procs.

[Judge_Xero]

MCH needed for HC to catch up to Foe, for Rain to matter less (check, thanks to materia) and for their valley DPS to be a bit better without greatly adding to their overall DPS. Instead SE did nothing about the latter, and made HC blow Foe way out of the water - to the point that BRD is now further behind MCH than the vice versa ever was on any normal-style fight.

The HC boost is pretty amazing. I wouldn't be surprised if people change their party comps to full melee with MCH. With how well MCH, DRG and MNK can AOE and if Tanks are still DPSing hard it's going to be a real game changer.

I'm not sure if that's a direction SE would be hoping for, but at least in a single caster with BRD, Foes, BV, ROD and Healer DPS it's hard to say which will be better. That is probably the greatest balancing act between BRD/MCH because of their difference in party dynamics is Full Melee VS Melee/Caster

[Cetonis]

The HC boost is pretty amazing. I wouldn't be surprised if people change their party comps to full melee with MCH. With how well DRG and MNK can AOE and if Tanks are still DPSing hard it's going to be a real game changer.

I'm not sure if that's a direction SE would be hoping for, but at least in a single caster with BRD, Foes, BV, ROD and Healer DPS it's hard to say which will be better.

I actually think if SMN didn't get the Ruin 3 buff, they might have been the ones left in the dust (in favor of BRD+MCH if no BLM was available). With the SMN boost and the BLM QoL to aid their progression woes, it seems SE is at least somewhat cognizant of the caster vs. triple physical + MCH situation.

Rain's debuff will be worth a lot less once materia is melded up, and Foe is very definitely worse than HC now in single-caster comps. So whether BRD is better for a given fight will depend on whether or not it allows them to leverage multiple targets enough to do at least +50 or so self-DPS to beat out Hypercharge.

[Kabzy]

Noob question incoming: How is Foe's worse than the new Hypercharge? I thought they both provide a 10% increase?

[Cetonis]

Foe gives an average of about +12.5% (after Battle Voice) damage, to around 25% of the group DPS, for around 30% of a fight. Give or take depending on healer DPS levels and consistency, how long the quality uptimes are, jumps/breaks etc. In any case, in theoryland it's something like a 0.925% increase to raid damage overall.

The old HC was about 0.6% (excluding the MCH itself), which was a problem. Now, it gives +10% damage to around 60% of the group DPS, for around 25% of a fight. Again, give or take, maybe needing to hold it for a burst phase or such, etc. But in a vacuum, we're looking at about a 1.5% increase to raid damage.

So now it's a decided advantage over Bard, and much moreso than the reverse was true in 3.0. However, Bard still has advantages in multi-target damage, so it's kind of a matter of whether we get a Midas tier that looks more like Gordias (mostly very BRD-friendly), or one that looks more like Second Coil (mostly MCH-friendly) or Final Coil (kind of mixed).

[Arkenne]

hrm... well, may be a noob answer but, Foes only boost magical damage, while Hypercharge can either be Physical or Magical depending on which turret you have out...

On the magical deparment it may be weaker, given the affected area size, and can't go higher than its 10%, unlike Foes that, added Battle Voice, doubles its effect potency.

However Foes does not offer any benefit for the caster himself, which Hypercharge's physical version actually do. It may be trickier to apply for AoE situations but its not like its impossible, and all the melees (including the tanks) will love it more than Foes.